Wicked World: Poems of Philadelphia

By Ernest Yates

ON THE SUPERFICIALITY OF ART



How can poetry be
anything besides deceit?

How else can poets adapt to emptiness?
When the masters discovered

how meaningless the world is,
naturally they were disappointed.

So they responded with irony, satire,
putting on airs, all kinds of tyranny.

Some even went mad.
Nowadays we usually just binge

on topics urgent as our selves,
our longings for justice and a stable home.

Meanwhile the world keeps behaving
according to its god: change?

meaningless, inevitable, merciless change?
obedient to that god’s twin commandments

endless death, never-ending generation.
Watching their children grow, every father

every mother already knows this . . .
this renewing emptiness.

Beyond joy. Beyond sadness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669809920

Ernest Yates

Born in Ancon, Panama, and raised in New Orleans, Ernest Yates obtained a doctorate in English from the University of Pennsylvania. He has lived and worked in the Philadelphia area for fifty years. Mr. Yates has published poetry in dozens of literary magazines and journals, and has won the Grand Prize of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, among other poetry awards. For further information, please consult Mr. Yates’s website? ernestyates.com

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Copyright © 2022 by Ernest Yates.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 02/17/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

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CONTENTS

Stumble

Jostle

Changeling

Stance

Perfection

Borneo

Death Wish

Plot

Hooka-Tooka

Culture

Limping toward Fenniman

On the Superficiality of Art

On Broad Street

Hyperbole

Crossroads

Seeing

Muted Joy

Fluency

The Haunting

Widespread Realms

Vain Speculation

Apocalypse

Beauty

Joy

Progress

Visionaries

PECO IS MAKING THE ENERGY GRID MORE EFFICIENT

Passion

Desert

The Stuff of Life

Flash

Aloha

Unloved Things

Ladder

A Degree of Trust

Resemblances (in Septets)

Floaters

Making it New

Miracle Center

Cool Young Woman

Universal Message

Busker

Free Vacuum

Deceived

Unstylish

Only the Living

Cartoons

Fever

Sidewalk

Addendum

Postscript

To Jacqueline

Wicked World

STUMBLE

When i become God

i will sing the fisherman’s song,

i will strum the music of the spheres . . .

but a moment ago i stumbled

on the last step out of the underground

and nearly fell smashmouth

on a patched stone pavement.

Clumsy, clumsy, cursing my clumsiness

i set off across City Hall’s courtyard

overshadowed by cut limestone

windows in perfect rows

the sheer heft and mass of neo-classic architecture.

Citizens pass in business attire

on their way between offices,

all of them intent

on some critical private purpose,

but i’m just out rambling with my wife . . .

on this day heaven-made for rambling,

sky so blue it could dissolve every bitterness,

air so mild it could soothe any burn,

my children thriving, and their children,

my life an easeful retirement.

I wish i knew a song

that would make people dance

beneath these Roman arches;

i wish i knew a music

that would charm stone water nymphs

by this splashing fountain.

JOSTLE

I don’t know how to write poems.

I don’t know what words mean,

i don’t know what means,

i don’t know the meaning of meaning.

This entire city’s at the end of the mind,

beyond my ability to comprehend.

Unknown intentions placed

THE RITZ-CARLTON here,

some human purpose demanded

ionic columns, dentils,

pediment with citizen philanthropist

Stephen Girard in low relief.

The whole point seems to be human purpose,

as if stones conspired with words

to embody and express motives―

ambition, aspiration, prosperity, power, greed.

Even the stones that lack explicit signs are

signals,

unfinished compositions

declaring the wish to be finished,

declaring the ultimate self-sufficiency of human desire.

Soot has blackened the whole entablature.

Pedestrians in silent postures

of unawareness pass,

dodge somehow the stuttering cars.

Oh it’s a mindless frenzy

of attraction and repulsion,

approach and avoidance,

every particle, every atom

in motion and shifting direction